Internet protocol (IP, Internet Protocol) services gradually become a mainstream in a bearer network, the proportion of time division multiplexing (TDM, Time Division Multiplexing) services is continuously declining. Therefore, routers are increasingly adopted in networking of the bearer network. In another aspect, with the rapid growth of service traffic, in order to provide a reliable transmission capability with a large capacity, a wavelength division multiplexing/an optical transport network (WDM/OTN, Wavelength Division Multiplexing/Optical transport network) technology is more widely applied in the bearer network. Therefore, in the bearer network, data between routers is transmitted by WDM/OTN devices, thereby forming a double-layer network architecture including WDM/OTN devices plus routers as shown in FIG. 2. A service processing process thereof is shown in FIG. 2. In FIG. 2, ETH (Ethernet) indicates an Ethernet, ETH PHY (Physical) indicates an Ethernet physical layer, and ETH MAC (Media Access Control) indicates an Ethernet media access control layer.
It may be seen from FIG. 2 that, all the services need to be processed by the routers. With the continuous increase of the service traffic, the demand for capacity of the router grows, the development of the router gradually encounters bottlenecks in terms of size and power consumption, and actual deployment is difficult. In the future, the capacity of the router is probably incapable of satisfying the demand of the network.
In order to solve the foregoing problems, a solution shown in FIG. 3 may be adopted: multiprotocol label switching (MPLS, Multiprotocol Label Switching) switches may be used at core node devices to replace the routers. In the solution, an MPLS switching technology is adopted in the core node devices to replace an IP forwarding technology in the router. Label switching is to label a packet so as to replace IP forwarding with the label switching. Compared with the router, the MPLS switch provides simpler processing, has smaller power consumption and a higher integration level. Meanwhile, the MPLS switch may also implement a bandwidth statistical multiplexing function. Therefore, the bandwidth of the network barely increases as compared with router networking. A service processing process of the solution is shown in FIG. 4.
In the solution, the WDM/OTN devices need to support large-capacity data transmission. Therefore, the OTN layer is retained. It means that hardware design such as encapsulation and monitoring of the OTN layer, and software design such as maintenance and administration still exist, and the cost cannot be reduced by a large degree. Moreover, the maintenance and administration of the OTN layer are different from the maintenance and administration of the MPLS layer. Two planes, namely, the OTN layer and the MPLS layer, need to be designed in the core node, which increases complexity of the design of the device. The cost and the power consumption are still high.